"The End of Empire will fold naturally with an expanding view of energy technology far beyond the shallow definition of current day science. It is incredibly strange how even in the Club of Budapest, energy science does not go past harnessing the power of wind, water, plants, geothermal, and tide, incapable of seeing nuclear energy utilization beyond the "caveman club, deadly radiation" method .
The Promise of Energy for Everyone A Power Point Introductory Presentation
http://www.relaxspa.net/TheRadiusOfCurvature12-28-10PPShow2003.pps
We have barely glimpsed the full scope of Energy Evolution and applications
The End Of Empire
Great human advances were made when we still valued life.
http://www.neweconomyworkinggroup.org/blog/end-empire
As part of the New Economy 2.0 series
By David Korten
In an earlier day our rulers were kings and emperors. Now they are corporate CEOs and hedge fund managers. Wall Street is Empire’s most recent stage. Its reign will mark the end of the tragic drama of a 5,000-year Era of Empire.
Imperial historians would have us believe civilization, history and human progress began with the consolidation of dominator power in the first great empires that emerged some 5,000 years ago. Much is made of their glorious accomplishments and heroic battles.
Rather less is said about the brutalization of the slaves who built the great monuments – the racism, suppression of women, conversion of free farmers into serfs or landless laborers, carnage from the battles, hopes and lives destroyed by wave after wave of invasion, pillage and gratuitous devastation of the vanquished, and lost creative potential.
Nor is there mention that most all the advances that make us truly human came before the Era of Empire, including the domestication of plants and animals, food storage and the arts of dance, pottery, basket making, textile weaving, leather crafting, metallurgy, architecture, town planning, boat building, highway construction and oral literature.
As the institutions of Empire took root, humans turned from a reverence for the generative power of life to a reverence for hierarchy and the power of the sword. The wisdom of the elder and priestess gave way to the arbitrary rule of often ruthless kings. Social pathology became the norm and society’s creative energy focused on perfecting the instruments of war and domination. Priority in the use of available resources went to military, prisons, palaces, temples and patronage.
Great civilizations were built and then swept away in successive waves of violence and destruction. War, trade and debt served as weapons of the few to expropriate the means of livelihood of the many and reduce them to slavery or serfdom. Whole empires were subjected to the delusional hubris and debaucheries of psychopathic rulers.
If much of this sounds familiar, it is because in the face of the democratic challenge, the dominator cultures and institutions of Empire simply morphed into new forms.
The ideals of the American Revolution heralded the possibilities of a new era of equality and popular democratic rule, but it was a more modest beginning than we have been taught to believe. Once the former colonies gained their freedom from British rule and declared themselves the United States of America, their new leaders put aside the pronouncement of the Declaration of Independence that all men are created equal and enjoy a natural right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – and set about securing their own power.
The king was gone, but the Constitution they drafted with a promise to “secure the Blessings of Liberty” for “We the People of the United States,” effectively limited political participation to white male property owners and secured the return of escaped slaves to their designated owners. Colonial expansion followed soon after as the new nation expropriated by armed force all of the Native and Mexican lands between themselves and the distant Pacific Ocean.
Global expansion beyond U.S. territorial borders followed. The United States converted cooperative dictatorships into client states by giving their ruling classes a choice between aligning themselves with U.S. economic and political interests for a share in the booty or being eliminated by assassination, foreign-financed internal rebellion or military invasion. Following World War II, when the classic forms of colonial rule became unacceptable, international debt became a favored instrument for forcing poorer nations to open to foreign corporate ownership and control.
Most of the economic, social and environmental pathologies of our time – including sexism, racism, economic injustice, violence and environmental destruction – originate in the institutions of Empire. The resulting exploitation has reached the limits the social fabric and Earth’s natural systems will endure.
As powerful as Wall Street appears to be, it’s abuse of power has so eroded the economic, social and environmental foundations of its own existence that its fate is sealed. We the People have a choice. We can allow Wall Street to maintain its grip until it brings down the whole of human civilization in irrevocable social and environmental collapse. Or we can take control of our future and replace the Wall Street economy with the values and institutions of a New Economy comprised of locally owned businesses devoted to serving their communities by investing in the use of local resources to produce real goods and services responsive to local needs.
Either way, Wall Street’s days are numbered. Ours need not be.
About David Korten: David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group and a founding member of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).
David Korten (livingeconomiesforum.org) is the author of Agenda for a New Economy, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community and the international best seller When Corporations Rule the World. He is board chair of YES! Magazine, co-chair of the New Economy Working Group and a founding member of Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE).
About New Economy 2.0
Visionary economist David Korten introduces a national conversation series, New Economy 2.0, on CSRwire Talkback based on his acclaimed book, Agenda for a New Economy, 2nd edition. For the next several weeks, Korten will summarize the main points and key lessons of each chapter of his book, leading from a dissection of what went wrong in the “phantom wealth Wall Street economy” to the presentation of a vision of a world of real wealth Main Street economies that support strong middle class societies, honor real market principles and work in partnership with Earth’s biosphere.
New Economy 2.0 envisions an economy in which life is the defining value and power that resides in people and communities. It contrasts with the popular New Economy 1.0 fantasy of a magical high-tech economy liberated from environmental reality and devoted to the growth of phantom wealth financial assets.
"Each time a person stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others. . .they send forth a ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance."Robert F. Kennedy
Using grade school physics of both Newtonian and Nuclear models, does anyone foresee counter currents of sufficient size to minimize/change direction of the huge 'Tsunami' roaring down on us, taking away not only our Freedom, but our Lives? Regardless if our salaries are dependant on us not knowing the inconvenient truths of reality (global warming, corporate rule, stagnant energy science) portrayed by the rare articles in the news media? I know only one - a free science, our window to Reality - that easily resolves the Foundational Problem of Quantum Physics and takes E=MC2 out of Kindergarten
Full Text Individual Post Reading
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Saturday, April 16, 2011
The Awful, Unsaid Truth: We’re Heading Back Toward a Double Dip - Common Dreams
But isn’t the economy growing again – by an estimated 2.5 to 2.9 percent this year? Yes, but that’s even less than peanuts. The deeper the economic hole, the faster the growth needed to get back on track. By this point in the so-called recovery we’d expect growth of 4 to 6 percent.
Consider that back in 1934, when it was emerging from the deepest hole of the Great Depression, the economy grew 7.7 percent. The next year it grew over 8 percent. In 1936 it grew a whopping 14.1 percent.Add two other ominous signs: Real hourly wages continue to fall, and housing prices continue to drop. Hourly wages are falling because with unemployment so high, most people have no bargaining power and will take whatever they can get. Housing is dropping because of the ever-larger number of homes people have walked away from because they can’t pay their mortgages. But because homes the biggest asset most Americans own, as home prices drop most Americans feel even poorer.
We must begin to differentiate between the 'wannna be" terrorists, and "real" terrorists that are destroying this nation and the world. Even an idiot can comprehend the simple math that when 2% own 98% of the world's wealth and resources and pay no taxes, the other 7 billion people, their cities, governments, schools, infrastructure are being economically strangled to death by the ever-tightening noose designed in the Corporate Business, Banking and Wall Street Model. Those left working are paid to Serve this Dragon eating its own tail, albeit with continuously lowering wage standards, benefits, rising retirement age, with increasing slavelike "productivity" and skyrocketing price gouging of consumer goods; while being TOLD to adapt to increasingly violent and deadly weather patterns caused by the 'no' global warming lies, all the while your Corporate Masters are flooded with daily, record breaking, obscene Profits.
SOP, standard operating procedure, what kind of Monster would take over a life saving drug segment, costing pennies to produce, with a previous monthly consumer cost of $30.00, and now charge $6,000.00 per month?
If you listen hard enough, you can hear screaming in the distance, from both Al Capone and Hitler, who ran out of their graves in horror, shock and shame for having accomplished so little in comparison: IN AN AGE OF SCIENTIFIC MARVELS, THE LAST 50 YEARS CAUSING THE SLOW MURDER DEATH OF BILLIONS UPON BILLIONS OF PEOPLE THROUGH STARVATION, POVERTY, DISEASE, LACK OF WATER, SANITATION, MEDICAL...................TOPPED OFF WITH A STRANGLEHOLD ON ENERGY EVOLUTION.
If you really believe science is so stupid as to remain stuck in oil, or play Tweedledee winks with wind, solar, and deadly nuclear waste ............ THEN LET ME SELL YOU SOME SWAMPLAND, while you listen to the business news daily telling you the NEW AMERICAN DREAM is to be a renter subjugated to your landlord. 30 years ago, it was said, FREEDUMB is DEADLY.
It is high time to review why Dr. Stanley Milgram did his infamous experiment, "Study in Obedience, May we choose not to become agents in a terribly destructive process" http://www.relaxspa.net/Revisiting_Power.htm
The Awful, Unsaid Truth: We’re Heading Back Toward a Double Dip - Common Dreams
The Awful, Unsaid Truth: We’re Heading Back Toward a Double Dip | Common Dreams Published on Thursday, March 31, 2011 by RobertReich.org
The Truth About the Economy that Nobody In Washington Or On Wall Street Will Admit by Robert Reich
Why aren’t Americans being told the truth about the economy? We’re heading in the direction of a double dip – but you’d never know it if you listened to the upbeat messages coming out of Wall Street and Washington.
Consumers are 70 percent of the American economy, and consumer confidence is plummeting. It’s weaker today on average than at the lowest point of the Great Recession.
The Reuters/University of Michigan survey shows a 10 point decline in March – the tenth largest drop on record. Part of that drop is attributable to rising fuel and food prices. A separate Conference Board’s index of consumer confidence, just released, shows consumer confidence at a five-month low — and a large part is due to expectations of fewer jobs and lower wages in the months ahead.
Pessimistic consumers buy less. And fewer sales spells economic trouble ahead.
What about the 192,000 jobs added in February? (We’ll know more Friday about how many jobs were added in March.) It’s peanuts compared to what’s needed. Remember, 125,000 new jobs are necessary just to keep up with a growing number of Americans eligible for employment. And the nation has lost so many jobs over the last three years that even at a rate of 200,000 a month we wouldn’t get back to 6 percent unemployment until 2016.
But isn’t the economy growing again – by an estimated 2.5 to 2.9 percent this year? Yes, but that’s even less than peanuts. The deeper the economic hole, the faster the growth needed to get back on track. By this point in the so-called recovery we’d expect growth of 4 to 6 percent.
Consider that back in 1934, when it was emerging from the deepest hole of the Great Depression, the economy grew 7.7 percent. The next year it grew over 8 percent. In 1936 it grew a whopping 14.1 percent.
Add two other ominous signs: Real hourly wages continue to fall, and housing prices continue to drop. Hourly wages are falling because with unemployment so high, most people have no bargaining power and will take whatever they can get. Housing is dropping because of the ever-larger number of homes people have walked away from because they can’t pay their mortgages. But because homes the biggest asset most Americans own, as home prices drop most Americans feel even poorer.
There’s no possibility government will make up for the coming shortfall in consumer spending. To the contrary, government is worsening the situation. State and local governments are slashing their budgets by roughly $110 billion this year. The federal stimulus is ending, and the federal government will end up cutting some $30 billion from this year’s budget.
In other words: Watch out. We may avoid a double dip but the economy is slowing ominously, and the booster rockets are disappearing.
So why aren’t we getting the truth about the economy? For one thing, Wall Street is buoyant – and most financial news you hear comes from the Street. Wall Street profits soared to $426.5 billion last quarter, according to the Commerce Department. (That gain more than offset a drop in the profits of non-financial domestic companies.) Anyone who believes the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill put a stop to the Street’s creativity hasn’t been watching.
To the extent non-financial companies are doing well, they’re making most of their money abroad. Since 1992, for example, G.E.’s offshore profits have risen $92 billion, from $15 billion (which is one reason it pays no U.S. taxes). In fact, the only group that’s optimistic about the future are CEOs of big American companies. The Business Roundtable’s economic outlook index, which surveys 142 CEOs, is now at its highest point since it began in 2002.
Washington, meanwhile, doesn’t want to sound the economic alarm. The White House and most Democrats want Americans to believe the economy is on an upswing.
Republicans, for their part, worry that if they tell it like it is Americans will want government to do more rather than less. They’d rather not talk about jobs and wages, and put the focus instead on deficit reduction (or spread the lie that by reducing the deficit we’ll get more jobs and higher wages).
I’m sorry to have to deliver the bad news, but it’s better you know.
© 2011 Robert Reich
Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. He has written twelve books, including The Work of Nations, Locked in the Cabinet, and his most recent book, Supercapitalism. His "Marketplace" commentaries can be found on publicradio.com and iTunes.
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